


May Not Be In Your Best Interest (part V)

by drea_rev



Series: May Not Be In Your Best Interests [5]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Face Punching, Food mention, Food mentions, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2017-12-08
Packaged: 2019-02-11 19:40:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12942303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drea_rev/pseuds/drea_rev
Summary: Thrilling conclusion to the saga of my AU where Bitty doesn't take abuse as well as he does in canon!Thanks for all the kudos and comments! Hope everyone has a nice December!





	May Not Be In Your Best Interest (part V)

What happens after a stressful day involving near-death by fire? 

A slumber party. Late night baking, KPop, and Eric falling asleep on his rug with April and March, in front of his laptop.

It was both an eventful and uneventful evening. Eventful, because the hockey team kept checking on him, and he eventually explained to them about the folder and why it was so important to him that he risked his life to go find it--mostly to wipe the concerned looks off their faces, because he was embarrassed about it, and wanted them to drop it already. 

And it worked. He thought it was mostly Ransom he had to thank for that. Ransom was the one who mentioned he kept his own mental health coping skills handouts in a binder. It was one of those 90s double binders that was basically a messenger bag but organized, it had a crossbody strap and everything.

The defenseman had probably convinced the others to lay off. Canadian, suffering from anxiety, and overwhelmed by parental expectations--Justin Oluransi was, in effect, a Jack Zimmermann who didn't take his problems out on others.

Eric's last few thoughts before falling asleep had involved trying to plan a secret pie-delivery mission to Ransom during his lab electives.

 

 

Bittle heard and felt loud thuds, muffled by sleep, and then he was being nudged and whispered to.

"Eric." _Nudge_. It sounded like March.

_Bam! Bam! Bam!_

"Eric, dude, someone's trying to break your door down?"

Bittle burst awake with a gasp. "Oh, lord, what in the--it's five in the mornin' on a Saturday, for--"

He stumbled over the girls' legs--March was now nudging and whispering to April, who was out cold with her hands on her stomach, her head somehow having slipped under Bittle's bed frame--and gripped the doorknob.

At that exact instant, the voice he was least expecting to hear muttered, " _Knew_ I shoulda taken JetBlue."

Eric's entire body went numb as he opened the door to see his father.

 

 

"Junior!" Coach called out, like it was damned football practice and not a residence where people were sleeping off Friday night debauchery. "You have two girlfriends? _Two_?!"

Ice rattled through Eric's lungs as he inhaled a breath to reply. March and April seemed speechless behind him, but his father didn't even give him the chance to give him an excuse.

"Where in the hell is that damned boy?!"

Eric blinked, gulped, and finally croaked, "Coach, I don't know! Is something wrong, Sir?

"Don't _know_? Why didn't you tell _me_ about any of it?! Little--thinks he can--" Coach Bittle was angrier than Eric had ever seen his father, and that included when Eric had announced his preference for figure skating.

"I--well--Sir, I--I don't--know, just gimme a minute here--" Eric couldn't even form a sentence. this was the worst thing that could have happened. This was even worse than anything he could have imagined. His insides were frozen, and yet his heart was only pounding so heavily in his ears that it was like a gong, or being a foot from the biggest speakers at Spring C.

And that was when Jack's door opened.

"Oh--I called your father, Bittle."

Eric couldn't breathe.

"I didn't realize that he'd come here," the older man, only in pajama bottoms, scratched his chin. "I just--I didn't know what else to do, with your--"

And whatever he was going to say next faltered to a ham-fisted haymaker that hit its mark against his teeth.

Jack went down, like he never did on the ice, and sort of rolled on his side, and March was clutching Eric's bicep and choking, bug-eyed, and April's face was contorted in a triangular look of both horror and amusement, and they both cried "HOLY SHIT!" in unison, as Jack, blinking and bloody, picked himself up on his elbows, his wide transparent eyes even more shocked-looking than they normally were.

" _DON'T YOU SPEAK TO MY SON EVER AGAIN, BOY_!"

Coach stamped on Jack's door's threshold, and threw forward an arm to point at the offending player on the floor. "Called me last night! Said he had concerns about my son! I thought it was a damned prank call, he said he looked me up on Spoke-e-o or some damned government website, said he--he used to yell at Eric Bittle in front of everyone, make fun of his size, said _Eric bittle's first goal, sir, I told him it was a lucky shot_!"

Eric was a now hundred percent convinced he had gone into a coma from smoke inhalation and this was his bizarre soap opera style coma dream. This wasn't really happening. Jack had not been punched by his father. His father was not in Samwell, Massachusetts. He hadn't even ever come up for Family Day with Suzanne.

"Now you listen here," Now Coach was bending down to the floor to talk to Jack in the quiet, serious, lethal fashion he began pregame pep talks to the high school football team with, the one that told them if they pulled the same dumb shit they'd done last game they were as good as dead to him, "I don't give a shit who your daddy is, or that you're captain of this team. You ain't no coach to my son. He has two of them, three including me, and you ain't know shit about coaching and your 25 year old ass screaming at 18 year olds don't got nothing to do with bein' captain. You're just a jerk."

Somehow, from somewhere, even though he was dubiously convinced of this period of his life's reality right now, Eric gathered that he had to head off this catastrophe before his family became destitute in a court of law for medical bills incurred during an assault on the patriarch of hockey's son. "S-sir, w-why don't we all have breakfast and talk this over?"

Coach Bittle straightened up and turned again to Eric, who was again turned into chips of ice on the floor.

"Y'all don't got Waffle House here, I take it?"

There was a pause.

"We have IHOP," March said. "It's open 24 hours."

"I'll drive," April said.

"Awful kind of you," Coach Bittle stepped back over the threshold and made one last lethal look back at Jack, pointing at him with his quarterback finger, "YOU'D BETTER PLAY REAL NICE WITH MY BOY, ZIMMERMANN!" before slamming the door.

 

 

April and March shared an order of Rooty Tooty Fresh 'N' Fruity pancakes. Coach Bittle ordered New York Cheesecake Pancakes.

"Don't tell your mother," he muttered to Eric, next to him in the booth, as he dug in. "S'posed to be watchin' what I eat. Doctor Choi's orders."

He didn't mention how they also should probably not mention to her how he'd pulled a Van Damme on her celebrity crush's offspring. Eric picked at his fried steak. He'd ordered it to appear manly. March and April were feeding each other bites. His father seemed oblivious, and turned to him. "Not hungry, Junior?"

"Sorry, sir. I just--I didn't realize Jack would call you--I didn't want you to worry, you or Mom! What if I lose my scholarship?"

There--it was out--it was in the air, and not packed inside him, and he wondered if the walls really would crumble with the weight of his fear.

"Junior, you can worry 'bout that later."

"But--I'm--Jack really thinks I'm bad at it, and the coaches--"

In response, he felt something he hadn't felt in years, a warm hand ruffling his hair. He ducked by reflex and looked at his father, who had somehow demolished the pancakes already.

"Junior, if they choose not to renew your scholarship they have to let you know by July 1st and you have a chance to appeal. Scholarships cannot be taken away for performance or injury reasons related to athletics during the academic year. There'd be a hearing."

"Eric!" April shrieked. "Did you hear what he just said?!"

"How come our research failed us?!" March said angrily.

Eric's whole body was shaking. "I'll be the only one that doesn't get it renewed. Lord."

"Eric, stop that!"

"You'll have a chance to appeal it if it happens! There's a hearing! It's not the end of the world!"

"Maybe it'll be the end of my world," Eric raised his hand and tapped his temple, sadly. "In here."

A painful silence followed, and then Eric noticed Coach's hands next to him, white-knuckled, clasped as if in prayer.

"Look, Junior. If you think it's the end of the world, you don't know nothin'."

 

 

"I always knew I wanted to go play football at UGA. It was the only thing on my mind. I didn't care what other letters I got. When the letter came from University of Georgia I showed it to everyone in Madison."

Eric said, automatically, "You went to Kennesaw State."

"I'm gettin' there," his father leaned back in the booth. "They took away my scholarship after the first year. Freshman year. I appealed and didn't get anywhere. Big football school. Tough coaches. It was like someone broke my legs. And there was a boy that used to pick fights, told me I was too short, told me I was too weak. Here's the thing, Junior--"

"Sir," Eric never interrupted his father at home. But he was hyperventilating. Too much of the day had bent his idea of what reality looked like. "You went to Kennesaw State. You led them to three championships as starting QB--there are trophies all over the house--Moomaw never said you went to any other school--"

"Listen, Junior. My ma and pa took it hard. I spent weeks tryin' to tell 'em the right way, and when they found out--" Coach's breathing tightened, "look, son, the point is I went to Kennesaw State after. I walked on--"

"You walked on. You--" Eric choked, "You--you were a _walk-on starting quarterback_ \--"

"--I understood, in the end. I wasn't good enough for the scholarship when I was a freshman at UGA. But here's the thing. I walked on, and they didn't need a quarterback. But I couldn't sleep. So I went to the gym. When it was dark and the janitor was carryin' out the day before's trash. His voice, that boy's voice, at night was all I could hear. He was miles away still paid to be playin' football at my dream school and I ground my teeth into bits. The quarterback they got at Kennesaw State, he got in trouble for drunk driving sophomore year and they looked at me. That UGA boy's voice and ma and pa's looks when they found out was all I could hear and see for years, but those were the best years I ever played, made my passes into bullets. They took away my scholarship. It wasn't the end of my world, Junior."

The next couple of hours, of taking Coach Bittle to the train to the airport and saying goodbye, are a blur to Eric. Only the third time that March and April reenact the Jack punch on the way back to the car does Eric wake up.

"You be Jack this time," April says.

"Fine," March says, and when April throws a mock haymaker, she crumples and rolls to the side.

"That's enough," Eric says. "People are looking. What do you think, should we drop by the trauma ward? Or should I bake a pie to bring over first?"

March laughs as she buckles herself in. "He's fine, Eric. Had it coming."

"He might sue."

"That'd be a pussy move."

 

 

The only person taken to the hospital that day, turns out, was Shitty, who lost consciousness from excessive laughing. Jack was pressing a moldable ice pack to his jaw and grimacing on his bed when Eric checked on him.

"My dad never hit me," Jack said sheepishly.

Eric ignored that and set a slice of pie on his desk. Reality was still a bit hard to accept right now. "Jack. My father shouldn'ta done that. And I hope I can make it up to you."

He continued talking over Jack's rising objections, "But...can you do me a favor?"

Jack was suddenly quiet, his brows furrowed.

"When you get into the NHL, don't...tell people to get with the program or quit. They're doing the best they can. You got to care about others and how they feel, honey. You got so many people that...care about you and support you, just try to spread that support to other people who just joined instead of treating them like they don't deserve to be on a team with you."

Jack frowned, and was still frowning when Eric left to return to his room.

And his rainbow pug coping skills folder. And to, after some rumination, finally delete two emails from his drafts.

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
